Harvey Milk

• Born: May 22, 1930
• Birthplace: Woodmere, New York
• Died: November 27, 1978
• Place of death: San Francisco, California

Activist, politician, and social reformer

Milk was the first openly homosexual man elected to public office in San Francisco. He successfully drafted and worked for the passage of a bill protecting the civil rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people.

Areas of achievement: Government and politics; social issues

Early Life

Harvey Milk was born the second son of a prosperous family of Lithuanian Jews and the grandson of a prominent businessman who assisted in the founding of the first local synagogue. Despite being frequently teased during his school years for his gawky physical appearance, he played football for Bay Shore High School in New York and developed a deep interest in opera. Graduating in 1947, he majored in mathematics at the New York State College for Teachers in Albany (now SUNY-Albany) from 1947 to 1951. He then served in the United States Navy during the Korean War as a diving officer and instructor, but he was dishonorably discharged in 1953. He acknowledged his sexual orientation in high school but kept it quiet. After leaving the Navy, he worked at a number of business positions for insurance and brokerage firms in New York City (and, briefly, Dallas) and invested in several Broadway plays, including Hair (1968). His conservative views began to shift before he moved to San Francisco in 1969 to take a position as a securities analyst.

Life’s Work

Milk was one of a large number of gay men who followed the dreams of the counterculture to California in an effort to build a more open life and create a tolerant social and legal environment. After opening his camera shop in March, 1973, as a businessman in the heavily gay Castro Street neighborhood, Milk took an early interest in the politics of his new home and ran unsuccessfully for public office in 1973, 1975, and 1976. His initial entry into politics was, by his own admission, triggered by anger over the Senate Watergate hearings, but his later campaigns showed a swift acquisition of political savvy and an ability to integrate many populations into his community base of support. A change in the election laws in 1977 permitting district-based voting for the Board of Supervisors rather than obliging all candidates to run citywide allowed Milk to put together backing from a highly diverse base of support. Working across community lines, he crafted a platform addressing common needs, ranging from improved transportation, child care, and subsidized housing to the establishment of a police review board. He was regarded initially by the gay political groups in San Francisco as an outsider and only gradually developed the coalition of lesbian and gay supporters that would help elect him to the Board of Supervisors.

Among his political initiatives were managing corporate land deals, legalizing gambling, and assigning a commuter tax to anyone working in San Francisco who did not live in the city. A major achievement was his drafting of and successful argument for a gay and lesbian civil rights ordinance protecting against discrimination in housing, public accommodations, and employment. This was especially significant because many other American cities that had such ordinances on their books were at this time finding them challenged and, in some cases, rescinded. His promising career was cut off on November 27, 1978, when both he and Mayor George Moscone (with whom Milk had established a solid working relationship) were assassinated by former supervisor Dan White at their offices in city hall. White and Milk had frequently clashed in board meetings, and White, who had resigned from his position, was unsuccessfully attempting to be reappointed. White confessed to the double murders but was convicted of voluntary manslaughter. News of this light sentence triggered a massive demonstration that was termed the White Night Riots when some three thousand outraged gays and lesbians descended on city hall, trapping both city officials and police inside and setting fire to several police cars. The San Francisco Gay Democratic Club voted to change its name to the Harvey Milk Gay Democratic Club as a memorial, and acting mayor Dianne Feinstein appointed Harry Britt to serve out the remainder of Milk’s term

Significance

As San Francisco’s first openly gay supervisor, Milk forced citizens of the city to acknowledge the presence of and contributions made by their lesbian and gay neighbors to the life of the city. His assassination and the subsequent trial of White publicly showcased the complex dynamics of American homophobia and placed a human face on a prejudice directly unfamiliar to many members of the national public. His ability to establish common ground with a variety of disparate groups as an openly gay man also disproved the contention that gay candidates would attempt to promote their community’s interests exclusively. The knowledge that Milk had successfully run for office without allowing his sexual orientation to become or be made a political liability served to inspire every later campaign by American lesbians and gay men seeking election to public office at any level of government. He recorded three cassette tape messages based on his long-standing knowledge that as a gay activist he might be subject to murder, and he adapted the Jewish tradition of leaving a moral legacy to his own situation. The tapes set forth his wishes as to acceptable political successors and then called upon those who remained in the closet to come out as an act against prejudice and to use the energy of their grief in a constructive manner. The closing section of the message castigated organized Christianity for not speaking out against the campaign by Anita Bryant to rescind a gay civil rights ordinance in Dade County, Florida, and urged the gay movement to continue as a source of hope for the next generation. One of the tapes contained a phrase that was widely quoted after Milk’s death: “if a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door.” This was born out of Milk’s conviction that one of the most important things he could do was to give hope to people who believed that no substantial change in their social position or in their access to social authority was possible. It also served notice to America that the days of quiet persecution of women and men on the basis of their sexual orientation were over.

The reaction of the cultural community to Milk’s death mirrored his transformation from a colorful and locally known leader to a symbol of the price of honesty and freedom. His life was honored by a poem written by San Francisco writer Lawrence Ferlinghetti, “An Elegy to Dispel Gloom” (1978), and became the subject of historical accounts, children’s books, and even the libretto of a 1995 opera, “Harvey Milk.” A documentary film, The Times of Harvey Milk, was created in 1984, blending interviews with Milk and commentary by colleagues and friends, and a feature film titled simply Milk appeared in 2009 starring Sean Penn.

Bibliography

Shilts, Randy. The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2008. A reprint of the original detailed biography done by a San Francisco journalist who interviewed people from every sector of Milk’s life.

Weiss, Mike. Double Play: The San Francisco City Hall Killings. Reading, Mass.: Addison Wesley, 1984. An account of the trial of Dan White and the aftermath of Milk’s murder by a journalist who covered the proceedings and was inspired to create this book after being interviewed by Shilts for the project that would become The Mayor of Castro Street.